My journey to financial independence and early retirement

Picking up a cup of coffee on your way to work? Going out to eat this weekend? Before you drop $5 on that venti caramel frappuccino or $30 on a night out, make sure you’re not eating away your retirement. A few weeks ago, Emily and I went through our June budget and noticed that we had spent over $750 dollars that month on food. $750 dollars! After going through our budget we realized the culprit was eating food outside the home

Are you spending more than you make? Does your checking amount seem to be dwindling down more and more every month? Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, meaning that if their next paycheck didn’t come in, for whatever reason, they would be facing a financial crisis. Do you know where your dollars go each month? Knowing and telling your money where to go is one of the most powerful tools that will help you build wealth. Remember, money is a

Every dollar you save can be used as a tool to further your financial independence goals. If you want to learn how to navigate through life and have money work for you, you must learn to negotiate. Negotiation simply means that a “win-win” is achieved and both parties compromise to a mutually agreed upon decision. Let’s take the very simple example of you buying a house. If someone is selling their house for $100,000 and you think that $95,000 is

If you’re thinking about upgrading to a newer house, don’t! I’ll show you why in just a few minutes. But first, I want to tell you a story about real estate. Real estate can be an amazing and powerful investment tool. A tool like buying a foreclosure and flipping it for profit, or buying a house, renting it and having rental income. On the other hand, though, real estate can also be a very real money pit, and does not always go

Well! We finally did it! We decided to pay off our house early. What an amazing feeling it is to know that a bank will never foreclose on our home. Paying off the house was not an easy decision. A lot of factors played into if and when we were going to pay it off. Overall, I’m very happy with the decision. It’s been 1 month since we paid it off and not writing a check to a mortgage company this

If you haven’t read my post about setting your financial goals, read that post before trying to understand these “lighthouses” that will help you achieve your FI goals. Lighthouses are used to guide a ship at sea or warn a ship of upcoming danger. As we journey through the seas of personal finance, these lighthouses will serve as beacons to lead you to the calm shores of early retirement. Before diving into each one, I want you to make a paradigm shift about

For most people, like me, financial independence (FI) is a journey that will make you question everything you’ve ever been taught about “how the world works”. FI will make you want to swim like a salmon going upstream. I’m not talking about living in a cardboard box or only showering the first Saturday of the month, I’m talking about challenging what the world tells you is normal. Challenge your way of life, the things that make you happy, the way you

Vanguard’s website is very user friendly and it takes just minutes to open up a brokerage account with them. I learned about Vanguard from an ad on Google and after reading a few articles I was hooked. I quickly realized that all the funds that Vanguard offered were low-cost and I could quickly build a portfolio that would suit my needs based on my investment horizon. When I started looking at Vanguard funds I was considering a few different funds and

All I can say is I wish I had found Vanguard MUCH sooner! Vanguard’s commitment to keep costs low is what makes Vanguard sail apart in a sea of investing pirates. Vanguard is also client-owned, which means that Vanguard doesn’t have outside owners. Investors /shareholders, like me, buy Vanguard’s funds and the funds own the company. What that means to me is that I get the benefits and reap Vanguard’s profits in the form of low cost funds. Low cost funds mean that, over the

In 2012 I wanted to start playing around in the stock market, so I opened up an Etrade brokerage account and transferred around 10,000$ into it. The website itself is extremely user-friendly and pretty easy to navigate. I dabbled, somewhat aimlessly, in buying individual stocks and losing on some, gaining on others. I wasn’t trying to make millions overnight, I just wanted to try to see if I could actually make a consistent, steady source of income by trading every